Twenty-five percent of U.S. schoolchildren attend a rural school. Yet, rural school issues are typically subsumed by debates focused on urban problems and the misguided notion of ample resources available for their remediation. These assumptions belie the reality of the spatial mismatch that exists for rural schools, especially around mental…

What are acute poverty challenges for culturally disadvantaged school communities across the United States? How do practicing teacher-researchers, pursuing advanced degrees, view this issue and the 21st century skills and dispositions classroom teachers need to foster change? Curious about this topic from the viewpoints of teachers who are…

This narrative literature analysis examines the storylines of rural teachers told through published research on rural teachers. Using a narrative analysis approach, we investigated research published between 1970 and 2010--four decades of rural-oriented education research and policy work. Four storylines emerged from our coding of rural-related…

Because violence in public schools is seen by many as a growing problem, several studies have been conducted to look at the impact of nonfatal teacher victimization. However, a large number of these studies have focused exclusively on students as victims and failed to investigate the impact that school-related crime has on school personnel. The…

Context: Due to various barriers to health care access in the rural setting, there is concern that rural older adults might have lower access to prescribed medications than their urban counterparts. Purpose: To review published research reports to determine prevalence and mean medication use in rural, noninstitutionalized older adults and assess…

Questions "supply-push" theory of rural development, which suggests that upgrading workers' skills will guarantee rural development. Data from past two decades show tendency of decreasing growth in job skills and in requirement for quantifiable job skills (e.g., level of education). Upgrading job skills by itself seems unlikely to pay…

Data on rural-urban differences in access to telecommunications technology suggest that the U.S. "digital divide" is diminishing. However, major shortcomings in telecommunications infrastructure persist in rural America, and more serious barriers to rural development are related to human capital shortages. These may be resolved in some…

According to U.S. Census data, in rural Pennsylvania, 37% of adults did not complete higher school, and 21% did not go beyond 8th grade. As a consequence of present demographic and literacy trends, the proportion of the workforce with low levels of basic skills is growing. At the same time, a changing labor market is creating new jobs that demand…

The lifestyles and daily experiences of rural children and adolescents differ considerably from those in urban or suburban areas. Examination of 15 curriculum materials related to substance abuse prevention and development of student decision-making skills revealed that depictions of situations and settings ignored or (less frequently) stereotyped…

In 2004 the Monitoring the Future study marked its 30th year of conducting national surveys of substance use among American young people. Beginning with the first survey of high school seniors in 1975, the study has provided the nation with a window through which to view the important, but largely hidden, problem behaviors of illicit drug use,…

The rural special education context is unique because of the distinct environment and the variety of rural school subcultures. However, little information about rural special education is available prior to the late 1970's, partially because federal agencies lacked a working definition of "rural." Although rural and urban special…

Comprehension of the current condition of rural education is essential to national education policy and program considerations, yet rural schools go unnoticed at the federal level because of a paucity of national rural data. The changing nature of rural population, the national mandate for equal educational opportunity, and the need for a timely…

Four different assumptions about the nature of rural education govern major strategies to reform its deficiencies: rural education is a problem because it is not urban; some small isolated schools are "necessarily existent"; small schools are desirable because of flexibility and responsiveness; and educational problems are independent of…

In an effort to help shape a research agenda for rural education, this document reviews the research on rural education and at-risk students to determine the relative influence on student outcomes of poverty and community location. Sections of this review address: methodological considerations (definitions of "rural" and "at-risk," inadequate…

Rural public schools can be perceived as economic drains on community resources; they also can be perceived as being of inadequate quality, hence demanding more support. Educational critics, however, are questioning the notion that more is better and are recommending teaching fewer, more integrated courses, in longer time periods. In analyzing…